As someone with no dog in this fight, and not really giving a hoot on who wins, if Sterling hasn't delivered as you'd all hoped, what did you hope for? Right now, England are 45 minutes from reaching the final in over 50 years. Sterling has been part of every victory. Would you be happier if he'd scored in every game but they'd gone out in the group?
He's made space for his teammates and is contributing to a successful, winning team. So what's the problem?

Not the case, as it doesn't actually prevent you from employing anyone. The top level of Ice hockey in the UK for example has a maximum limit of 14 non-British players in the match squad. 3 of which have to be EU passport holders, or you can just go with 11 non-EU passport holders. You can still employ as many/few as you want, the rule only applies to how many can be present in the match day squad. It would be the same principal if football here was to implement such rule. (EU referendum fallout notwithstanding)
I think though the main problem is the lack of need for English players to export themselves elsewhere, you look at all the other "top" leagues and as many go to play abroad as they do domestically. Due to all the money available in the English game (on top of the general culture too) this doesn't happen in England. I doubt any of the current "best" English players could hope to get contracts at even half the wage of what they are on now from the likes of a Bayern Munich, Juventus, Atletico Madrid etc and those are sides regularly at or near the top of their domestic game. (On top of all making Champions League Finals.) Yet I doubt many English players would be interested in going to those clubs without their current wage package, and I doubt those clubs would be interested in acquiring them in any event as they wouldn't be suitable enough for their squads.

Exactly this. Since the game runs on an older version of the FM engine, League standard and reputation remain static so you could use that as a base value for attribute scaling.
Since the NHL is the "best" league, there isn't any change so you see everything as it is in the DB if you're the GM of an NHL team. KHL is generally considered the next best league, so you could say maybe 1.10 for attributes in that league. (Scale up 10%.) SHL 1.15, Liga 1.20, AHL 1.25 etc and so on.
If not that, it would be extremely helpful as I've already said to have some sort of information to go on that tells me what is a good attribute value for the league I'm managing in. Especially for junior leagues as well, as virtually all the junior players British players I see have virtually every attribute in red, so it's very hard to tell within the game mechanics who could be the stand outs, they all look of the same standard right now.

I’m playing this new EHM from a different perspective since I played the last retail release several years ago. Back then I played only NHL as that was the only league I had any sort of knowledge about. In the years since we’ve had an EIHL team come in locally. (Braehead Clan) So I’ve been supporting them and following the Elite League since 2010.
I’ve found trying to sign or select players for my line-up as Clan GM rather difficult to suss. Particularly for British players as some of their attributes are so low its makes it so hard to tell if they’d be any use whatsoever on my team. It’s also hard to tell what is deemed “very good” for the EIHL. Does 10 speed actually translate to 20 in the EIHL for example? I’ve been able to sign up Eirk Cole and Keith Aulle for the Clan who have much easier to assess stats, but I doubt I’d be able to get players like that again in future seasons.
Just a few examples, Ben Davies who is a fast skating, very skilled and offers a lot of flair is rated only 7 for deking, flair and accelerating, then just 9 for speed. David Clarke (considered one of the league’s best ever snipers) is only rated 8 for slapshots and 12 for wrist, and even more bizarrely 3 for positioning & 5 for off the puck. Then Jonathan Boxall, a player who may not be the most skilled, is still an absolute work horse type player who gives 100% and is rather physical. Is only rated 7 & 10 for team work and work rate, along with a 5 for hitting and 6 for checking.
I understand these might be fair values in the “global” hockey world scheme of things, and you can’t put those up as higher up teams would just take them for buttons and really mess with things. Should instead player attributes perhaps scale depending on what league a player is in?
Playing in or looking to sign players as an NHL club, you see a player’s “true” attribute values as they are since the NHL is the “best” league in the game with the highest reputation/standard rating. The lower down the tree you go, the more the attributes scale up.
That way Clarke’s shooting attributes in the EIHL can be scaled up to 15+, but if an NHL GM were to look at him, they’d see them as 8 & 12, therefore not worth them signing him.
Hope I got that across ok, would like to see something that makes things a little easier to judge for recruiting & selecting in lower level/junior leagues.

Tried searching for this but wasn't really sure how to look for this for search terms. FM09 stopped the game calender when either club european games were on or international qualifers fixtures, I liked this especially for knowing the internationals were playing and seeing how the World Cup and the Euros were shaping up.
Anyone know how to stop the game zooming by and just processing all these matches? I tried putting them on full details and also "subscribing" to them but all I get is news items about it, the game still won't stop for the fixtures.

Does anyone know why making db changes with the editor data file mess up something you don't touch? I loaded the database and then the xml file, I made some database changes (mainly at Man City with their new manager and tweaked their money a bit, didn't touch anything to do with Scotland). Then I tried to start a new game and couldn't with Scotland in it because all the teams that were suppose to be in the Junior leagues got wiped off.
I tested the national rules before saving my latest changes and was told they were fine, now I've loaded it again and it now reports the missing teams from all the junior divisions, how the heck did that happen?
I'd rather not go into the editor and manually re-add every team thats suppose to be in the junior leagues, does anyone know what portion of the xml file that has the code allocating the teams to those divisions?